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Red mapping

What exactly is gerrymandering (red mapping say the Republicans)? They want to red map the country for the next presidential election.

If there scheme works, they could win the next presidential election even if their candidate loses the poplular vote! Don't count them out yet despite the fact that minorities and women and other groups despise them. will the US become just another banana republic?

Re: Red mapping

Originally Posted by Glowpun

What exactly is gerrymandering (red mapping say the Republicans)? They want to red map the country for the next presidential election.

If there scheme works, they could win the next presidential election even if their candidate loses the poplular vote! Don't count them out yet despite the fact that minorities and women and other groups despise them. will the US become just another banana republic?

Each state has a certain number of congressional districts based upon allocation by population based on the census. Those districts are then drawn to decide who is in which. Both sides gerrymander when they have the power to do so. The democrats try to draw the lines that will give them the best chance of winning the most congressional seats in that state and the GOP does the same when they are in power. It does not impact the Presidency much except in states where electoral college delegates (which are assigned based upon your congressional districts) are apportioned based on who won the district as winner take all for the state. So, if you are in a winner take all state with 13 CD's, the winner gets all 13; if you are in the two states that apportion, then both parties usually get delegates because some CD's are heavily GOP and some DNC.

Re: Red mapping

Originally Posted by Glowpun

What exactly is gerrymandering (red mapping say the Republicans)? They want to red map the country for the next presidential election.

If there scheme works, they could win the next presidential election even if their candidate loses the poplular vote! Don't count them out yet despite the fact that minorities and women and other groups despise them. will the US become just another banana republic?

Gerrymandering is the drawing of legislative district lines in such a way as to capture the most registered voters of a given political party. For instance, below is a pic of Illinois 4th Congressional District, currently in the hands of Louis Gutierrez -

You might notice that it looks [more than] a little weird to have the district split in two like it is but both sections are heavily Hispanic which gives Gutierrez an advantage over anyone who might oppose him in an election.

The concept of "Redmapping" involves concentrating on certain districts to vote Republican and the Democrats do exactly the same. The reason that this is effective and can get someone elected without getting the overall popular vote is because electoral votes are (generally) distributed according to districts. If a heavily Democrat district has 90% turnout with 90% voting for the Democrat candidate but the other districts have lower turnout and/or 51% voting for the Republican is is easily conceivable that the Democrat will have a higher vote total but will still lose more districts and thus lose the election.

This is, in fact, one of our greatest protections against single party governance and core to the ability to retain our Republic.